International Auschwitz Council: stop Middle East war!!

Survivors of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz appealed Thursday for peace in the Middle East, saying the fighting creates hate and “threatens humanity.”

The International Auschwitz Council, which includes Holocaust survivors, scholars and religious leaders, appealed to international leaders to launch peace initiatives, “insignificant though they may appear to be, with the view to overcome the hateful antagonisms while promoting dialogue and cooperation.” …

“The war in the Middle East kills people, destroys their homes, roads and bridges, as well as their hopes for normal life and development,” the council said in a statement.

“It awakens despair and hate … and threatens humanity.”

The Nazis killed up to 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

The council was set up in 1990 to oversee preservation and educational efforts at the site.

The Government of Israel has recently purchased from the United
States bunker-busting bombs (GBU-28), for use in its war in Lebanon.
These bombs contain depleted uranium – a carcinogenic substance
that spreads in the form of a toxic and radioactive dust, which enters
the lungs and bones and is especially harmful to babies and young
children.

We call on the Government of Israel not to make use of these bombs.

This call is of special significance on August 6, the anniversary of the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

These days of war remind us of the dangers facing humanity, when the
warring sides are equipped with nuclear weapons and radioactive
materials.

The State of Israel must not resort to the use of weaponry that can
cause environmental damage lasting hundreds of years, or any weapon
of mass destruction.

We call on the Government Israel and all the governments in the
Middle East to renounce weapons of mass destruction without delay!

A Middle East free from all weapons of mass destruction would be the
best guarantee against their use.

Signed: The Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic,
Biological & Chemical
Weapons
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These are crucial and difficult months in the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. We know, however, that a just and lasting peace will never come to the Middle East if peace-making is left solely to governments. The peoples of Israel/Palestine working for justice, peace and reconciliation need the help of us, the international civil society, people of good will, who will not let occupation, conflict and injustice prevail.

In order to express our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Israel and to empower ourselves to work more effectively for a just peace, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), one of the leading Israeli peace organizations, has teamed up with Experience Travel Tours of the UK to enable potential and active peace-makers to visit the area, meet the people on all sides and evaluate the situation for themselves. Ten days of experiencing “the facts on the ground” will add critical depth to your reading, attending lectures and advocacy. Our study tour brings you into direct interaction with local individuals and organizations representing a broad set of opinions in both Palestinian and Israeli societies, while providing a wide range of experiences, including quality time with local peace-makers and activists. ICAHD’s views, grounded in years of activism on the ground and in-depth analysis, are frequently sought by diplomats, journalists, fact-finding missions and academic groups, in Israel and abroad. Being “embedded” with the people on both sides provides a maximum of personal security.

Yosef (Tommy) Lapid – Jerusalem Post – It is unthinkable that the memory of Auschwitz should serve as a pretext to ignore the fact that living here among us are Jews that behave toward Palestinians exactly the way that German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved toward Jews. When we decide, and rightly so, to never under any circumstances compare the behavior of Jews to that of Nazis, we are forgetting that anti-Semitism only reached its height at Auschwitz. It had existed, was active, frightening, harmful and disgusting – exactly like Hebron settler Yifat Alkobi`s image – in the years that preceded Auschwitz too. And behind shuttered windows hid terrified Jewish women, exactly like the Arab woman of the Abu-Isha family in Hebron.

Charges similar to and even sharper than those leveled by Carter, including the use of apartheid terminology, are regularly made inside Israel by writers and academics, and even by elements within the political establishment itself. Tommy Lapid, the head of the council of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel and a Holocaust survivor himself, used a radio broadcast on January 20 to denounce Zionist settlers’ abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron in terms far more “inflammatory” than those used by Jimmy Carter.

“It was not the crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn,” said Lapid, describing his childhood in Croatia.

“I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?” Lapid was referring in part to television footage showing a settler hissing “whore” at a Palestinian neighbor and settler children throwing rocks at Arab homes.

“It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today towards Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved towards Jews,” said Lapid.

Tommy Lapid is a well-known Zionist politician. The former head of the secular center-left Shinui party, he participated in the coalition government only a few years ago under Ariel Sharon.